Hail to the Dinosaurs!
Newsflash: My buddy John Wood has something new and exciting for Strength and Health fans and fans of old-school strength training:
http://www.oldtimestrongman.com/1945_strengthandhealth.html
Meanwhile, one of our readers from Italy sent in a training question – one that I get quite often:
“How many singles are enough?”
Let me answer it this way.
I once performed the following workout in bottom position squats in the power rack:
135 x 1
225 x 1
315 x 1
405 x 1
450 x 1
500 x 1
When I finished the workout I was covered with chalk, dripping with sweat, and breathing like a locomotive. It was a heck of a workout. And it worked. I was big and thick and strong and I probably could have beaten a grizzly bear 2 out of 3 in arm-wrestling.
On another occasion, I performed the following workout in bottom position squats in the power rack:
135 x 1
225 x 1
315 x 1
405 x 1
420 x 20 singles
When I finished the workout I was covered with chalk, dripping with sweat, and breathing like a locomotive. It was a heck of a workout. And it worked. I was big and thick and strong and I probably could have beaten a grizzly bear 2 out of 3 in arm-wrestling.
On still another occasion, I performed the following workout in bottom position squats in the power rack:
135 x 1
225 x 1
315 x 100 singles, resting 30 seconds to one minute between lifts
When I finished the workout I was covered with chalk, dripping with sweat, and breathing like a locomotive. It was a heck of a workout. And it worked. I was big and thick and strong and I probably could have beaten a grizzly bear 2 out of 3 in arm-wrestling.
Which was best?
They all were! Each workout was hard, heavy and challenging. Each workout stimulated muscular growth. Each workout made me bigger and stronger.
Now, I will note this – doing 100 singles – what I call “The 100 rep Challenge” (an idea I got from from Kim Wood, who got it from an old Iron Man with an article by George Irving Nathanson, a training partner of Joe Hise) – is really tough, really grueling, and takes a long time to do. It also takes a long time to recover from your workout. It’s hard to do on a regular basis. It usually works better as a once in a while thing or as part of a one exercise specialization program.
20 singles is much more manageable. Ten is also good. So is five.
But working up to ONE heavy single works pretty well. And it has the benefit of being quick and fast and being something that you can recover from pretty easily.
And please remember that there’s nothing at all wrong with varying the number of singles you do and how heavy you go. You can do one heavy single, two heavy singles, three heavy singles, five heavy singles or seven heavy singles or ten heavy singles.
Each way of using singles is a little bit different – but each way is very effective.
So – how many heavy singles should you do? How heavy should they be? What percentage of your one rep max should you use?
The answer is – there are many different ways to do it. Your job is to experiment and find what works the best for you. But when you do, please remember this -- it may very well be the case that less is more.
One or two heavy singles with 90 or 95 percent of your one rep max may work wonders as part of an abbreviated training program – and doing each of your exercises once per week may be a big key to getting the most out of your single rep workouts.
But, please note that heavy singles are big medicine. They’re not for beginners. Save them for when you are an intermediate or advanced lifter. And be sure to break into them by doing low rep training for a few months before you try singles. If you’ve been doing high reps and you suddenly try singles, you are asking for trouble.
And if you do try heavy singles – warm up well – work up in progressive poundage jumps – and use perfect form! And for safety’s sake – do them in a power rack just in case you miss.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a great day. If you train today, make it a good one!
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. I cover heavy singles in detail in Strength, Muscle and Power – along with many other old-school training methods that will add some massive mojo to your training:
http://www.brookskubik.com/strength_muscle_power.html
